This blog addresses issues in the current museum and art gallery worlds through the perspective of the discipline of art history.

Friday, May 11, 2012

Donna Haraway: Humans and Cyborgs: A Necessary Relationship

In her 2000 lecture entitled “Birth of the Kennel: Cyborgs,
Dogs and Companion Species” Donna Haraway discusses the significance of “dogs
emerging out of cyborg materialization and figuration”[1] to
the human existence. This lecture
introduces a different way to discuss the relationship between man and
machine. Whereas previous discourse has
focused on this relationship as man creating machine, Haraway suggests that in
some respects, machine has helped to create man. She traces how the human relationship with
machines evolved into one consisting of man and cyborg and eventually man and
companion species.

Haraway defines the cyborg in many
ways but for the purpose of her lecture, she surmises that a cyborg is a hybrid
of machine and organism. She describes
this relationship between man and cyborg as deriving from the usage of
organisms as meat and lab animals and other practices consistent with
informatics and biologics. Haraway
states that this “cross species relationship is mediated by entire cultural
apparatus including enterprised-up relationships to biomedicine, veterinary
practice, reproductive technologies, and pedagogical doctrines.”[2] It can be said that humans must create life
in an artificial way and in this construction, humans use other organisms as
tools. However, Haraway maintains that
this human-cyborg relationship does not end here but continues to transform as
indicated by the relationship between humans and companion species.

According to Haraway, humans and
domesticated animals are coevolved significant others to each other in complex
and asymmetrical ways. To illustrate her
point Haraway tells her listeners that human did not create the domesticated
dog. Haraway instead suggests that “dogs
created themselves and adopted humans as part of their reproduction strategy.”[3] In fact, dogs allowed themselves to be
domesticated in an effort to procreate in a more efficient and safe environment. Haraway asserts that “technology [has] not
invade[d] nature but dogs have… appropriated higher reproduction for their own
breeding [purposes].”[4] An analysis of this relationship between
humans and companion species necessitates a definition of this phrase. Haraway states that she “uses the
term[inology] ‘companion species’ as an interrogative term[inology] about [the]
historical emergent with other animals who are not meat, lab, or wilderness
animals or vermin.”[5]

After establishing the evolution of
this relationship between human and companion species, Haraway notes the
importance of discerning its qualities between those of a relationship between
animal and human or human and cyborg: “The
particular cross species relationship… is about the specific historical
circumstances of contemporary companion animal culture in the cyborg-ized and
heavily informatics and biologic saturated world.”[6] In an effort to describe how this cross
species relationship has established both participants out of the kind of
relationality in question, Haraway introduces an idea of choreography and its
actors.

Borrowing from a contemporary of
hers, Haraway equates this cross species relationship to choreography between
different actors. Not only are the
actors participating in the choreography or relationality, but she states that
“actors are the product of the relationality.”[7] It is significant to note here that to
Haraway, life is a verb and its actors are not always human. She asserts that actors do not enter into a
relationship with pre-determined ideas or with intentions of forming
boundaries. These actors are essentially
created out of their relationships with each other. Their positions and functions in the
environment are defined by their relationality to each other. Haraway connects this idea back to her
human-machine relationship: “The kind of sociality that joins humans and
machines is a sociality that constitutes both. [Thus] who humans are
ontologically is constituted out of that relationality.”[8]

Haraway believes that humans must create life
in artificial ways. She argues that not
only are humans using other organisms as tools to artificially construct life,
but in addition, humans are influencing the lives of organisms and vice
versa. As evidence of this theory,
Haraway draws on the relationship between human and cyborg and illustrates how
it has morphed to create a relationship between humans and companion
species. The progression and trajectory
of these relationships has allowed Haraway to analyze their nature. She concludes that the relationality between
actors in a relationship (be it between humans, organisms, cyborgs, or
companion species) actually constitutes their existence. The need for relationships between actors and
the subsequent influence on each other proves the necessity of the existence of
the actors themselves.

1 comment:

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About Me

I am a recipient of an M.A.in art history from Savannah College of Art and Design specializing in contemporary art, art criticism, critical theory, and Native American art and architecture. I earned a BA in French and History from Michigan State University. I am Director of the Grand Bohemian Gallery in Charleston, South Carolina. In my free time, I research and write critically and analytically about art and how it relates to life. I believe that one can better understand oneself through an examination of that by which one is surrounded. The physicality and tangibility of this knowledge is what interests me. Through a venue of art and cultural material, I endeavor to use my skills and education to help inform the public on current cultural, social, and economic issues. A comprehension of art, then, can lead to an understanding of current societies and cultures, in turn, lending insight into the future and becoming a tool for change.